Magician's Gambit

  "I told you to get clear," Aunt Pol snapped at him.

  "I couldn't help it. I couldn't get loose."

  "What happened?" Silk's face was startled.

  "A Grolim broke through," she replied.

  "Did he see us?"

  "For a moment. It doesn't matter. He's dead now."

  "You killed him? How?"

  "He forgot to defend himself. I followed his thought back."

  "He went crazy," Garion said in a choked voice, still filled with the horror of the encounter. "He jumped off something very high. He wanted to jump. It was the only way he could escape from what was happening to him." Garion felt sick.

  "It was awfully noisy, Pol," Belgarath said with a pained expression.

  "You haven't been that clumsy in years."

  "I had this passenger." She gave Garion an icy look.

  "It wasn't my fault," Garion protested. "You were holding on so tight I couldn't break loose. You had us all tied together."

  "You do that sometimes, Pol," Belgarath told her. "The contact gets a little too personal, and you seem to want to take up permanent residence. It has to do with love, I imagine."

  "Do you have any idea what they're talking about?" Barak asked Silk.

  "I wouldn't even want to guess."

  Aunt Pol was looking thoughtfully at Garion. "Perhaps it was my fault," she admitted finally.

  "You're going to have to let go someday, Pol," Belgarath said gravely.

  "Perhaps - but not just yet."

  "You'd better put the screen back up," the old man suggested. "They know we're out here now, and there'll be others looking for us."

  She nodded. "Think about sand again, Garion."

  The ash continued to settle as they rode through the afternoon, obscuring less and less with each passing mile. They were able to make out the shapes of the jumbled piles of rock around them and a few rounded spires of basalt thrusting up out of the sand. As they approached another of the low rock ridges that cut across the wasteland at regular intervals, Garion saw something dark and enormously high looming in the haze ahead.

  "We can hide here until dark," Belgarath said, dismounting behind the ridge.

  "Are we there?" Durnik asked, looking around.

  "That's Rak Cthol." The old man pointed at the ominous shadow. Barak squinted at it.

  "I thought that was just a mountain."

  "It is. Rak Cthol's built on top of it."

  "It's almost like Prolgu then, isn't it?"

  "The locations are similar, but Ctuchik the magician lives here. That makes it quite different from Prolgu."

  "I thought Ctuchik was a sorcerer," Garion said, puzzled. "Why do you keep calling him a magician?"

  "It's a term of contempt," Belgarath replied. "It's considered a deadly insult in our particular society."

  They picketed their horses among some large rocks on the back side of the ridge and climbed the forty or so feet to the top, where they took cover to watch and wait for nightfall.

  As the settling ash thinned even more, the peak began to emerge from the haze. It was not so much a mountain as a rock pinnacle towering up out of the wasteland. Its base, surrounded by a mass of shattered rubble, was fully five miles around, and its sides were sheer and black as night.

  "How high doth it reach?" Mandorallen asked, his voice dropping almost unconsciously into a half whisper.

  "Somewhat more than a mile," Belgarath replied.

  A steep causeway rose sharply from the floor of the wasteland to encircle the upper thousand or so feet of the black tower.

  "I imagine that took a while to build," Barak noted.

  "About a thousand years," Belgarath answered. "While it was under construction, the Murgos bought every slave the Nyissans could put their hands on."

  "A grim business," Mandorallen observed.

  "It's a grim place," Belgarath agreed.

  As the chill breeze blew off the last of the haze, the shape of the city perched atop the crag began to emerge. The walls were as black as the sides of the pinnacle, and black turrets jutted out from them, seemingly at random. Dark spires rose within the walls, stabbing up into the evening sky like spears. There was a foreboding, evil air about the black city of the Grolims. It perched, brooding, atop its peak, looking out over the savage wasteland of sand, rock, and sulfur-reeking bogs that encircled it. The sun, sinking into the banks of cloud and ash along the jagged western rim of the wasteland, bathed the grim fortress above them in a sotty crimson glow. The walls of Rak Cthol seemed to bleed. It was as if all the blood that had been spilled on all the altars of Torak since the worldbegan had been gathered together to stain the dread city above them and that all the oceans of the world would not be enough to wash it clean again.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  AS THE LAST trace of light slid from the sky, they moved carefully down off the ridge and crossed the ash-covered sand toward the rock tower looming above them. When they reached the shattered scree at its base, they dismounted, left the horses with Durnik and climbed up the steeply sloped rubble to the rock face of the basalt pinnacle that blotted out the stars. Although Relg had been shuddering and hiding his eyes a moment before, he moved almost eagerly now. He stopped and then carefully placed his hands and forehead against the icy rock.

  "Well?" Belgarath asked after a moment, his voice hushed but carrying a note of dreadful concern: "Was I right? Are there caves?"

  "There are open spaces," Relg replied. "They're a long way inside."

  "Can you get to them?"

  "There's no point. They don't go anywhere. They're just closed-in hollows."

  "Now what?" Silk asked.

  "I don't know," Belgarath admitted, sounding terribly disappointed. "Let's try a little farther around," Relg suggested. "I can feel some echoes here. There might be something off in that direction." He pointed.

  "I want one thing clearly understood right here and now," Silk announced, planting his feet firmly. "I'm not going to go through any more rock. If there's going to be any of that, I'll stay behind."

  "We'll come up with something," Barak told him.

  Silk shook his head stubbornly. "No passing through rock," he declared adamantly.

  Relg was already moving along the face, his fingers lightly touching the basalt. "It's getting stronger," he told them. "It's large and it goes up." He moved on another hundred yards or so, and they followed, watching him intently. "It's right through here," he said finally, patting the rock face with one hand. "It might be the one we want. Wait here." He put his hands against the rock and pushed them slowly into the basalt.

  "I can't stand this," Silk said, turning his back quickly. "Let me know once he's inside."

  With a kind of dreadful determination, Relg pushed his way into the rock.

  "Is he gone yet?" Silk asked.

  "He's going in," Barak replied clinically. "Only half of him's still sticking out."

  "Please, Barak, don't tell me about it."

  "Was it really that bad?" the big man asked.

  "You have no idea. You have absolutely no idea." The rat-faced man was shivering uncontrollably.

  They waited in the chill darkness for half an hour or more. Somewhere high above them there was a scream.

  "What was that cry?" Mandorallen asked.

  "The Grolims are busy," Belgarath answered grimly. "It's the season of the wounding - when the Orb burned Torak's hand and face. A large number of sacrifices are called for at this time of year - usually slaves. Torak doesn't seem to insist on Angarak blood. As long as it's human, it seems to satisfy him."

  There was a faint sound of steps somewhere along the cliff, and a few moments later Relg rejoined them. "I found it," he told them. "The opening's about a half mile farther along. It's partially blocked."

  "Does it go all the way up?" Belgarath demanded.

  Relg shrugged. "It goes up. I can't say how far. The only way to find out for sure is to follow it. The whole series of caves is fairly extensive, though
."

  "Do we really have any choice, father?" Aunt Pol asked.

  "No. I suppose not."

  "I'll go get Durnik," Silk said. He turned and disappeared into the darkness.

  The rest of them followed Relg until they reached a small hole in the rock face just above the tumbled scree. "We'll have to move some of this rubble if we're going to get your animals inside," he told them.

  Barak bent and lifted a large stone block. He staggered under its weight and dropped it to one side with a clatter.

  "Quietly!" Belgarath told him.

  "Sorry," Barak mumbled.

  For the most part, the stones were not large, but there were a great many of them. When Silk and Durnik joined them, they all fell to clearing the rubble out of the cave mouth. It took them nearly an hour to remove enough rock to make it possible for the horses to squeeze through.

  "I wish Hettar was here," Barak grunted, putting his shoulder against the rump of a balky packhorse.

  "Talk to him, Barak," Silk suggested.

  "I am talking."

  "Try it without all the curse words."

  "There's going to be some climbing involved," Relg told them after they had pushed the last horse inside and stood in the total blackness of the cave. "As nearly as I can tell, the galleries run vertically, so we'll have to climb from level to level."

  Mandorallen leaned against one of the walls, and his armor clinked. "That's not going to work," Belgarath told him. "You wouldn't be able to climb in armor anyway. Leave it here with the horses, Mandorallen."

  The knight sighed and began removing his armor.

  A faint glow appeared as Relg mixed powders in a wooden bowl from two leather pouches he carned inside his mail shirt.

  "That's better," Barak approved, "but wouldn't a torch be brighter?"

  "Much brighter," Relg agreed, "but then I wouldn't be able to see. This will give you enough light to see where you're going."

  "Let's get started," Belgarath said.

  Relg handed the glowing bowl to Barak and turned to lead them up a dark gallery.

  After they had gone a few hundred yards, they came to a steep slope of rubble rising up into darkness. "I'll look," Relg said and scrambled up the slope out of sight. After a moment or so, they heard a peculiar popping sound, and tiny fragments of rock showered down onto the rubble from above. "Come up now," Relg's voice came to them.

  Carefully they climbed the rubble until they reached a sheer wall. "To your right," Relg said, still above them. "You'll find some holes in the rock you can use to climb up."

  They found the holes, quite round and about six inches deep. "How did you make these?" Durnik asked, examining one of the holes.

  "It's a bit difficult to explain," Relg replied. "There's a ledge up here. It leads to another gallery."

  One by one they climbed the rock face to join Relg on the ledge. As he had told them, the ledge led to a gallery that angled sharply upward.

  They followed it toward the center of the peak, passing several passageways opening to the sides.

  "Shouldn't we see where they go?" Barak asked after they had passed the third or fourth passageway.

  "They don't go anyplace," Relg told him. "How can you be sure?"

  "A gallery that goes someplace feels different. That one we just passed comes to a blank wall about a hundred feet in."

  Barak grunted dubiously.

  They came to another sheer face, and Relg stopped to peer up into the blackness.

  "How high is it?" Durnik asked.

  "Thirty feet or so. I'll make some holes so we can climb up." Relg knelt and slowly pushed one hand into the face of the rock. Then he tensed his shoulder and twisted his arm slightly. The rock popped with a sharp little detonation; when Relg pulled his hand out, a shower of fragments came with it. He brushed the rest of the debris out of the hole he had made, stood up and sank his other hand into the rock about two feet above the first hole.

  "Clever," Silk admired.

  "It's a very old trick," Relg told him.

  They followed Relg up the face and squeezed through a narrow crack at the top. Barak muttered curses as he wriggled through, leaving a fair amount of skin behind.

  "How far have we come?" Silk asked. His voice had a certain apprehension in it, and he looked about nervously at the rock which seemed to press in all around them.

  "We're about eight hundred feet above the base of the pinnacle," Relg replied. "We go that way now." He pointed up another sloping passageway.

  "Isn't that back in the direction we just came?" Durnik asked.

  "The cave zigzags," Relg told him. "We have to keep following the galleries that lead upward."

  "Do they go all the way to the top?"

  "They open out somewhere. That's all I can tell for sure at this point."

  "What's that?" Silk cried sharply.

  From somewhere along one of the dark passageways, a voice floated out at them, singing. There seemed to be a deep sadness in the song, but the echoes made it impossible to pick out the words. About all they could be sure of was the fact that the singer was a woman.

  After a moment, Belgarath gave a startled exclamation.

  "What's wrong?" Aunt Pol asked him.

  "Marag!" the old man said. "That's impossible."

  "I know the song, Pol. It's a Marag funeral song. Whoever she is, she's very close to dying."

  The echoes in the twisting passageways made it very difficult to pinpoint the singer's exact location; but as they moved, the sound seemed to be getting closer.

  "Down here," Silk said finally, stopping with his head cocked to one side in front of an opening.

  The singing stopped abruptly. "No closer," the unseen woman warned sharply. "I have a knife."

  "We're friends," Durnik called to her.

  She laughed bitterly at that. "I have no friends. You're not going to take me back. My knife is long enough to reach my heart."

  "She thinks we're Murgos," Silk whispered.

  Belgarath raised his voice, speaking in a language Garion had never heard before. After a moment, the woman answered haltingly, as if trying to remember words she had not spoken for years.

  "She thinks it's a trick," the old man told them quietly. "She says she's got a knife right against her heart, so we're going to have to be careful." He spoke again into the dark passageway, and the woman answered him. The language they were speaking was liquid, musical.

  "She says she'll let one of us go to her," Belgarath said finally. "She still doesn't trust us."

  "I'll go," Aunt Pol told him.

  "Be careful, Pol. She might decide at the last minute to use her knife on you instead of herself."

  "I can handle it, father." Aunt Pol took the light from Barak and moved slowly on down the passageway, speaking calmly as she went. The rest of them stood in the darkness, listening intently to the murmur of voices coming from the passageway, as Aunt Pol talked quietly to the Marag woman. "You can come now," she called to them finally, and they went down the passageway toward her voice.

  The woman was lying beside a small pool of water. She was dressed only in scanty rags, and she was very dirty. Her hair was a lustrous black, but badly tangled, and her face had a resigned, hopeless look on it. She had wide cheekbones, full lips, and huge, violet eyes framed with sooty black lashes. The few pitiful rags she wore exposed a great deal of her pale skin. Relg drew in a sharp breath and immediately turned his back.

  "Her name is Taiba," Aunt Pol told them quietly. "She escaped from the slave pens under Rak Cthol several days ago."

  Belgarath knelt beside the exhausted woman. "You're a Marag, aren't you?" he asked her intently.

  "My mother told me I was," she confirmed. "She's the one who taught me the old language." Her dark hair fell across one of her pale cheeks in a shadowy tangle.

  "Are there any other Marags in the slave pens?"

  "A few, I think. It's hard to tell. Most of the other slaves have had their tongues cut out."

&nb
sp; "She needs food," Aunt Pol said. "Did anyone think to bring anything?"

  Durnik untied a pouch from his belt and handed it to her. "Some cheese," he said, "and a bit of dried meat."

  Aunt Pol opened the pouch.

  "Have you any idea how your people came to be here?" Belgarath asked the slave woman. "Think. It could be very important."

  Taiba shrugged. "We've always been here." She took the food Aunt Pol offered her and began to eat ravenously.

  "Not too fast," Aunt Pol warned.

  "Have you ever heard anything about how Marags wound up in the slave pens of the Murgos?" Belgarath pressed.

  "My mother told me once that thousands of years ago we lived in a country under the open sky and that we weren't slaves then," Taiba replied. "I didn't believe her, though. It's the sort of story you tell children."

  "There are some old stories about the Tolnedran campaign in Maragor, Belgarath," Silk remarked. "Rumors have been floating around for years that some of the legion commanders sold their prisoners to the Nyissan slavers instead of killing them. It's the sort of thing a Tolnedran would do."

  "It's a possibility, I suppose," Belgarath replied, frowning.

  "Do we have to stay here?" Relg demanded harshly. His back was still turned, and there was a rigidity to it that spoke his outrage loudly.